The Woman
“She did not dare to own that the man she loved was her inferior, or to feel that she had given her heart away too soon. Given once, the pure bashful maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too weak, too much woman, to recall it.” Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.

“One of woman’s magnanimities is to yield. Love, at the height where it is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble souls! Often you give the heart, and we take the body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves.” Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

“I’m waning in his favor, yet I love him.
I love this man, who runs to meet his ruin.
And sure the gods, like me, are fond of him;
His virtues lie so mingled with his crimes
As would confound their choice to punish one
And not reward the other.” All For Love by John Dryden

The Man
“He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?… His hopes for the future?… Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.” War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

“So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God.” The Little Minister by James Barrie


In Love
“To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.” Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray.

“Our souls were near together, like two raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer; for now they had touched and were not two, but one inseparable drop, crystallised beyond change, not to be disintegrated by time, nor shattered by death’s blow, nor resolved by any alchemy.” Green Mansions by W. H. Hudson.

“Love is my life, life is my love,
love is my whole felicity,
Love is my sweet, sweet is my love,
I am in love, and love in me.” From A Shepherd’s Garland by Michael Drayton.

The Cure
“It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way but it has been known to fail.” Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware , as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath–a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind–not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” As You Like It by William Shakespeare.

True Love

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile … her look … her way
Of speaking gently, … for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ —
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,–and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.